Field of Technology
This disclosure relates to computer software, and more particularly to numeric input through graphical user interfaces of computer software.
Background
Ordinary sliders and steppers are common in graphical user interfaces, but they have their bounds and increments preset or configurable via text input. These are useful for making changes to values on a consistent scale, but typically not for quickly making changes where the scale between changes varies by orders of magnitude.
A variant is a graphical representation of a wheel, which has no bounds but does not necessarily provide any more functionality in scaling values. Wheels that work logarithmically—so that each increment multiplies the value by some fixed factor rather than adding a fixed number—are not bound by given scales, but do not provide nicely rounded output.
Inputting numerical values is a very common operation in software that uses graphical user interfaces, especially in inherently numeric fields such as Computer-Aided Design. Existing interfaces, typically input boxes with up and down stepper buttons and/or sliders, work well when the scale of the input is known in advance, but can be problematic when the scale can vary dynamically. Sliders need predefined bounds and quantization (the discrete values that the slider can produce), and steppers have predefined increments.